Facebook unveils new plans for Virtual Reality

Facebook unveils their latest plans to help build the future of virtual reality to coincide with CEO Mark Zuckerberg's appearance at Samsung's Unpacked press conference on the eve of Mobile World Congress.

"VR is the next platform, where anyone can create and experience anything they want," Zuckerberg explained. "For right now, it's mostly used for gaming. That's quickly evolving."

Facebook have been investing heavily in VR, in the premise that it could deliver new social experiences, such as a virtual campfire with friends or spontaneous meetings in VR.

According to Facebook, since the Samsung Gear VR launch last November, more than 200 games and apps are no available for the platform in the Oculus store, and people have already watched more than a million hours of video.

“We’ve created a Social VR team at Facebook focused entirely on exploring the future of social interaction in VR. This team will explore how people can connect and share using today’s VR technology, as well as long-term possibilities as VR evolves into an increasingly important computing platform. They’ll work closely with Oculus and other teams at Facebook to build the foundation for tomorrow’s social VR experiences on all platforms.” explains Facebook.

Ericsson joins 20th Century Fox Innovation Lab

20th Century Fox's Innovation Lab, an initiative dedicated to raising and accelerating the bar for next generation content and devices, welcomes Ericsson as it's global partner.

The popularity of audio visual content has never been greater, and the Ericsson November 2015 Mobility Report states that by 2021, video will account for 70% of all traffic on mobile networks. Ericsson and the Fox Innovation Lab will work on innovations designed to help the media industry meet the demands of today's consumers.

The Fox Innovation Lab was created to solve the challenges faced delivering contend to today's audiences, by bringing together technology companies to enhance the viewing experience across all consumer devices.

"Ericsson is one of the most progressive and largest mobile companies in the world, making them the perfect partner to realise the possibilities of the Fox Innovation Lab. We are constantly investigating and advancing strategies that leverage new technologies to take the movie experience beyond one screen, and Ericsson’s involvement will further our ability to deliver on this vision." Says Danny Kaye, Executive Vice President, Global Research & Tech Strategy, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and Managing Director, Fox Innovation Lab.

Set to work on a number of projects, the duo will also develop solutions to allow consumers more opportunities to purchase and view video across multiple platforms.

Philips pushes HDR range

TP Vision—licensed to manufacture Philips-branded TV sets in a number of territories—will continue to push its current top PQ processing technology from its hi-end sets into this years mid-range models.

A key focus of the 2016 Philips range will be HDR performance, with all sets from the 6000 series upwards offering HDR+ compatibility and being able to accept HDR content via HDMI 2.0a, USB or via streaming services.

A firmware update will be required to ensure HDR compatibility shortly after the new products are launched in the second quarter of 2016.

With an initial short supply of genuine HDR content, Philips have created an HDR Upscaling feature to boost the dynamic range of any content. This HDR Upscaling has been designed to work with the Micro Dimming Pro and Bright Pro backlight systems, and will be vailable across the entire HDR product range.

In addition to HDR performance, all the Philips sets from the 6500 range upwards will feature native 100Hz 4k UHD panels to reproduce razor sharp images with exceptionally smooth and fluid motion.